Internacional Mendoza

... steep in places and with seriously sharp bends with the mountain on 1 side and 100 meters of fresh air the other, pretty hairy at times but absolutely brilliant. There was 4 of us riding, Ang & I plus Bill the Argy student and Ceasar the guide, while Diego (these are real names I swear) was in the minibus providing technical support. It was just as well too as Angīs tire fell off about 10 minutes in some how, then when Bill stopped with a flat, Ceasar pointed out ...

... managed - we dont have that time as we fly to LA in a day or so. So a quick panic at the bus station, a refund of tickets, a dash to the airport and we have bought our flight ticket for this afternoon. Bit of a sod really as flights are not cheap (it was actually 100pounds cheaper to by a return ticket than one way! So if anyone out there needs a Santiago to Mendoza ticket for next week we have a couple spare...) but, hopefully, allīs well that ends well.

... Iīve had been to; very European actually and boring as hell......

I did meet some nice people though. There was the Frenchman who fancied himself as a singer songwriter, playing guitar in the garden all night to his adoring fans (who secretly really wanted him to shut the **** up so they could get on with getting drunk in peace); the group of Irish people who had spent all their money for entire trip on booze and were frantically trying to devise a plan of how ...

... farms grabbed my head and kissed me on my cheek with a lot of passion. I returned the greeting considerably less passionately. Later, while tasting his wine which was by far the best we tasted over the two days, the owner surprised me again by grabbing my head from behind and planting another passionate and this time wet kiss on my cheek. A few of the surrounding tasters exchanged amused looks as he went in for another one. He then sat down at our table and we chatted about ...

... pasta and walked up an amazing street full of bars and clubs and restaurants both sides of the street. Night life doesn't get started till about 12 and dinner isn't till at least 9 or ten. Hard to get used to eating late, but we manage;) We meet some lovely people at the hostel - some pommies, lots of south americans tripping round during their uni hols and two aussie blokes from Brisbane.... small small ...

... our tour was watching the group of middle aged Russian guys who turned up on the tour already three sheets. At the very first winery they announced that they didn't want the tour of the facilities, they just wanted to drink. They spilt red wine down their tops, drank directly from the bottles they bought at each winery and kept wandering off into the cordoned off parts of the cellars, it was all harmless and it was very funny ...

... has to do with the good barrels!
We finished the day with a liquor factory. The guy had every possible spirit under the sun and he made his own special ones. I tasted "Passion DU femme", that he made for his wife (now that is romantic), which tasted of rose petals. A real girly drink. Sean tasted "The Russian death", we was so strong. It tasted like chartreuse with pepper. We had some more wine at the hosted and chatted to a couple of Australians.